Billy V

Fishwhisperer, Thanks for the clarification, but it still should've been here on Thursday rather than on Friday. When someone pays for expedited shipping, the onus is on the seller to get it out of their warehouse that day. I paid for "three day" shipping from the day I placed the order, which was Monday, not "three day shipping from whenever they decide to get it out of their warehouse". From what I've heard about them on other message boards, it seems that they typically take their sweet time processing it on their end. I'm over it now and I've found a replacement cable, but I won't ever order from them again. Very poor customer service, and the owner's attitude is the prime reason why.

I try not to air my grievances on these message boards, but today I've had such a negative experience with Stamina that I had to vent and tell you guys to beware of their shady practices. On Monday I ordered a 300' coated cable to replace the probe cable on my rigger. I've ordered from them in the past and they've always gotten my product to me in a reasonable time frame and I've even gone so far as to recommend them to others. However, this time I was in a bit of a hurry to get the product here because we're fishing again on Friday. I placed the order on Monday and paid for "3 day" shipping. I fully expected it to be here on Thursday morning. I didn't get an email from UPS until Tuesday night at 7pm telling me that they hadn't received the shipment from Stamina until 6:03PM on Tuesday. This morning when I checked the UPS website I'm seeing that it won't arrive until Friday afternoon. When I called Stamina to ask why my "3 Day" shipping was going to take 5 days I was given some run-around by the owner that I missed their deadline for shipping on Monday. Nowhere on their website does it state that there was a cut-off for shipping, but OK let's assume I did miss the cut-off. That being said, even if I did miss the deadline on Monday, in my mind Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday still comes to 3 days. I told the owner of the company that a) he ought to make his shipping policy more clear so that people can get things when they need them, and that I thought that he should ship me another spool of cable via overnight express at his expense to make up for what I see as mis-leading information and the fact that they didn't even get the order that I had placed on Monday to UPS until 6:03 PM on Tuesday. The owner of the company told me that it was my fault that I missed their cut-off on Monday and that the three days doesn't start until they take it to UPS (very late in the day on Tuesday evidently) and that he wasn't willing to pay for the overnight shipping to get another spool of the cable to me. When I pressed him and told him that if he continued to argue with me about shipping time that I would post this info on a few fishing forums he went to look to see if there was another spool in inventory. Surprise, surprise, apparently he sent me the very last spool of coated cable and he couldn't send me one anyway. Funny, but the customer service rep that I spoke to prior to him had checked inventory and indicated that there were plenty in stock. When I asked about what they call "Next day" shipping I was told that if I ordered on Monday that the product wouldn't be here until Wednesday because it won't leave their facility until Tuesday. Maybe I'm nuts, but every time I've paid for overnight shipping on something it's been here the very next day, not the day after that. Here's what their website says at the screen when you choose your shipping options: "SO IF YOU ARE IN A HURRY FOR YOUR ITEMS, SELECT AN APPROPRIATE AIR SHIPPING METHOD. Air shipments are shipped same day (if ordered by 9am central) or next day if ordered after 9am." In my head shipping the next day would mean it shipped on Tuesday during business hours. The fact that they didn't bother to take a time-sensitive shipment to UPS until after business hours the day after the order was placed shows me that they had no intention of getting it to me in 3 days. So the upshot of the deal is that I'll be looking for a coated cable elsewhere and I'll definitely be sending this shipment back to Stamina. Oh, and I'll never order from Stamina again, and I'll also warn as many people as I can about the way this situation was handled. I've had bad customer service experiences before , but today the owner of this company was just bordering on being abusive.

On Friday (prefish day) we left Fair Haven and started working our way East towards Oswego. We found a very nice school of Kings out in 300FOW and plucked three fish out of it in just over an hour. We wanted to keep eliminating unproductive water so we left those fish and worked our way out deep only to find an empty screen. Even with the empty screen we managed to box a nice King that came on a Northern King copper NBK fished off of our 600' copper set up. We came into the Fat Nancy's Shootout with a total weight of around 35 lbs for our biggest three fish. On Saturday we headed out to the same spot where we had 'em nailed down the day before only to find that they were gone. We worked that water for a couple of hours with only a 15" skippy to show for our efforts. I called a quick team meeting and we talked about either going West towards Fair Haven to fish our home waters for Kings or running in and fishing in closer for browns. The Kings hadn't been particularly cooperative in the past few days, so we opted to go for browns. We ran into 100FOW and before we even got completely set up we whacked a beautiful 7 lb brown on a Dreamweaver SS Area 51 fished of of our riggers. Right after that fish hit the deck we hooked up again on a NK Die Hard fished off of a wire diver only to lose it at the back of the boat. :x Then the clouds parted and the bright sun came out......oh great. We kept pushing towards Oswego where most of the browns were being caught and over the course of the rest of the day we hooked and lost another 6 browns and boated one more on a NK glow frog. We came into the weigh-in with two browns and sat somewhere near the bottom of the field. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy with my decision to fish browns, and I was even more upset with my decision when I found out that the leaders boxed out on Kings in my home waters of Fair Haven. :x On Sunday, we made the right choice and headed back to Fair Haven and fished our every day waypoints. We weren't set up for more than 5 minutes when we hooked up and landed a double. The first fish came on a Dalmatian Spinny/Sigg's Rigs Blue Dolphin on a wire diver out 300' on a .5 setting. The second took a Sea Sick Waddler down 100' on our riggers. We got set up after the mayhem and immediately had a major rip a ton of line on a Green Double Crush Glow Spinny/Sigg's Rigs Green Hypnotist fished off of our high diver out 350' on a 2.5 setting. We handed the rod to 14 year-old Cooper and the battle was on. Cooper did a great job handling the King, but in the end, the King managed to find a way throw the hook. After that we circled back around and worked what has historically been a productive area for us for the remainder of the day. We had a steady pick for the rest of the day and ended up going 10 for 12 on the day with 7 keepers. We took fish on every rod we had in the water....divers, riggers, and coppers. We came back to the weigh-in a lot happier than we were the day before. We leap-frogged several teams with one of the three or four best boxes of the day and ended up in something like 15th place. More importantly than where we placed though is the fact that we came back to the dock with three teen-aged boys who are now completely and utterly hooked on Salmon fishing! We had a great time in Oswego and we're looking forward to next weekend in Sodus.

We fish two divers/side all the time on Lake Ontario. And we run 'em both DEEP...100-125 ft. down. Fist of all, we only run wire on our reels. Secondly, we run the low diver on a .5 setting and get it down deepest. With the Walker deeper diver on 30# wire set at a .5, we figure a 2.5:1 ratio. So to get that rig down 100 ft we let it out 250 ft. The high diver we set on a 2.5 and we figure that ratio to be about 3.5:1. We let that diver out very, very slowly. If we have our low diver set 100' down, we'll try to have our high diver down 80-90' or so depending on where the temp and marks are. Like someone mentioned above, if you let that second diver out too fast, it will free-fall and find another line for sure. Keep the diver digging out away from the boat and you'll be fine. We also run a lot of 500 and 600 ft copper rigs in our spread. We rarely have the divers get into the copper. Mostly because we run the coppers out to the sides on big planer boards. I'll also echo the sentiment about short rigger leads. If we're running spoons we can stretch the leads back a bit further than we can if we're running a flasher/fly off the riggers. If you go much more than 30' back on a deep rigger you're going to catch that lure in the wire on your diver. We keep the flasher/fly leads to 10-15 ft. or so. Free sliders can also get caught in the diver wires, so we try and limit those to just our center (highest) rigger when we're targeting way deep kings. If you take a 3-d look at your spread and really think about what you have where and why, you'll start to see possible set-ups that will and won't work given your methods of deployment and your boat set-up. I try to put myself in the fish's position and think about what all that stuff looks like as it comes over top of me. That helps me keep it all straight.

Nice fish Skeiner!! We've been loving that the bigger Kings have shown up early this year out our way!!

On June 28th Yankee Troller, Maniac, Jay and I teamed up for the Mustad Challenge. One of the fish we managed to boat was the new Summer LOC Salmon division leader at 25.12lbs. It's now slipped down the board a bit. The fish came on a Green Double Crush Glow Smartfish/Siggs Rigs Green Hypnotist fly fished off of our 600' copper rig out over 130 FOW. The fish was also the largest fish of the tournament. Yankee's arms were just killing him a the end of the battle with the fish...it took close to 300' of backing out on top of the copper & leader. Way to go Yankee, it was a real thrill to boat that fish with some of my best fishing buddies on board! Here's the pics:

It was a great day for us. LOVE that Area 51!!

Today we found the browns that have been missing all season long and also played with a few nice Kings. We worked 30-45 FOW first thing in the morning and played with 6 or 7 browns, the highlight of which was this brown that currently sits in 4th place at 12.09lbs: Every one of the browns took a Dreamweaver Super Slim Area 51 spoon fished off of our riggers behind a chrome Shark. We ran riggers and short cores for the browns, and we couldn't buy a bite on the cores, but they sure did seem to like that Area 51 behind a Shark. Best down speed was 2.4mph, and the best riggers were set at 15 and 16ft. After the brown action dried up, we headed out to deeper water and started targeting Kings. We hooked up with several nice kings, and wouldn't you know it, the Kings also took an Area 51 spoon fished off of the riggers. 110'ft down over 120-135FOW seemed to be the best rigger for us, but we also hooked up off of our 95' and 50' riggers. We tried like mad to get a flasher/fly to fire, but we couldn't make one go today. The Area 51 was the only thing to get bit on our boat today. One of the other charter boats was at the gas dock right after we came in and had several Kings that he took off of a flasher/fly combo. He didn't have a single spoon fire. Go figure! 2.5 - 2.7 mph down speed was our best speed for the silvers and we found 56 degree water down 110' out over 130FOW with a surface temp of 60 degrees. The highlight of the King action was this 20.09 lb King that was sitting in 15th place after we weighed in at Screwy Louies. The screen was a LOT better looking than last weekend. What a fun morning!!

This morning we headed out before sunrise and set up a bit inside our waypoints from last night. I wanted to check the skinny water before committing to going out deep. We found tons of bait and hooks from 50-70FOW and we worked that area hard for a bit and were rewarded with a couple of hook ups. After that dried up we headed back to out waypoints from the night before and began picking away at them. Nothing fast and furious, but we kept ourselves steadily entertained and managed a very nice mixed box by the end of the morning. A new Northern King Glow Kermit took a couple of beautiful steelhead fished off of the riggers down 75 & 90ft over anywhere from 120-200FOW at 2.4-2.6mph down speed. We also had a Dalmatian Spinny/Siggs Rigs Blue Dolphin Pulse fly fire a couple of times on some Kings & a Steelhead, and we had this guy destroy a Dreamweaver Steelie Cane spoon that we had free sliding on a rigger set down 45ft: All in all a very good day!

Tonight I actually got to do some fun fishing of my own. Jay & I went out with our friends Jim and Mark for a short trip tonight and had a ball. After we assassinated about 5000 nasty ankle-biting flies, we found a nice Steelie and a small King out over 180FOW. The Steelie took a Northern King Seasick Waddler fished off of a 600' copper rig at 2.4mph down speed, and the king took a Siggs Rigs Mystery Pulse Fly behind a Green Spin Dr off the wire out 210' on a 2.5 setting, same down speed as the Steelie. The Pulse flies have been getting bit every time out lately and we're liking them more and more as the season progresses. Not a ton of marks tonight until just before dark in about 120FOW. We found some bait and a lot of hooks in a really condensed area and we worked them hard for the last few minutes of our trip but to no avail. Maybe they'll be there again in the morning?? Here's the pic:

Copper line just flat-out catches fish! And you don't have to put it all in the water. We have a 600' section of 45# copper that we regularly run down the chute with different lengths out depending on what depths we're trying to achieve. Think of copper as a stealth presentation....way behind the boat after all the disturbance of the boat, riggers, dipsys, flashers etc. has gone by. By far one of our most lethal rigs on Lake Ontario.

Great report Richard! Congrats on the new personal best!!

Given that we didn't take any kings at all last year till late June, we've been delighted with taking 10lb + kings each trip out so far this spring. And having that 16lb beauty in the box certainly eased the pain of having too few others in the box!

In a word...SLOW. We had fantastic color and temp in tight but after 2 hours of trolling in that great looking water we hadn't moved a rod. So I made the decision to head out in search of silver fish and within 15 minutes of turning us out we were rewarded with the biggest fish we've taken so far this year: The King weighed in at 16 lbs and took a Northern King seasick waddler fished down 25' off of a rigger. We had the spoon stretched back 50' and we were pulling 2.2mph out over 70FOW. The fish really put up a great fight and we had quite the time bringing him to net. Kudos to everyone on board for pitching in to help land the fish. We worked our way out as far as 200 FOW and we found a small pocket of water out over 170 FOW that held some fish and we looped it for most of the rest of the day and that's where we managed to take this small King. While we were out over 170FOW we had a new Siggs Rigs Glitter Glow Pulse fly/Green Spinny fire twice while fished behind a wire diver out 180'. It didn't sound like anyone in Fair Haven set the world on fire on Saturday as we listened to the vhf, and we confirmed that back at the dock. I sure wish the catching had been better, but the fishing was a lot of fun and I was happy to at least put a nice King in the boat.

We left the dock shortly after 5am today and ran out to the lake and set up in 15 FOW just East of the chute. The lake was fairly calm and there was a mild NW breeze as we got set up. There was a nice color line and resultant temperature break and once we got set up we began working that break. Within 10 minutes of getting set up a red/black squiggles KA-BOOM Shiner goes screaming off the planer board...FISH ON!!! After a short fight, Marcus landed his first-ever Lake Ontario King...a very healthy 10 lb beauty: No sooner did we get that fish in the boat and it began to blow. And it got cold. And it blew harder. We went from flat water to 4-5 footers in just a few minutes. Just before we decided to pull up and head in Alex boated a small brown on a black/silver KA-BOOM Shiner, and just before I pulled the last rod Marcus hooked up with a great steelhead that gave us a neat aerial show before it shook the hook at the back of the boat. That steelie took a Northern King Sea-sick Waddler fished 7' down off a rigger. The wind was continuing to freshen and it was getting downright sporty out there, so we headed into the bay to troll for a bit. I'm sure glad we didn't call it a day. We started seeing hooks on the 585 and I set up a program and had us fishing down 20-30 ft over 25-35 FOW. Over the next couple of hours we hooked up a bunch of times and landed quite a few beautiful browns. Best down speed was 2.2-2.4 on our Depth Raider. We were running our spoons 50' behind our Shark weights today (they don't spook browns like some guys say they do!). They were mostly interested in our Dreamweaver NBK and Beefeater spoons and a funky new Northern King spoon that I don't have a name for, but here's a pic: We also took a brown on that same KA-BOOM that I mentioned earlier: Working the Bay definitely made our trip...we found nice colored water and 54 degrees down 25ft. We kept some fish for dinner, put some back for another day, and had a few "long-distance" releases...all in all it was a fantastic day when Mother Nature was feeling mighty blustery. The NW wind definitely had shoved some temp up on shore...let's hope it holds for the weekend!

Hot action in the first hour and a half today, then a slow pick the rest of the day. The hot ticket of the day for us was a Northern King glow/pink frog, but we also got bit on a Lazer Glow Spook that I painted in my shop, a KA-BOOM red/black squiggles Shiner, a Northern King Orange Crush, a Siggs Rigs Glow Ghost Pulse Fly/Double Crush Glow White Spinny, and a Dreamweaver Steelie Cane. Two and three color leadcores worked well today as did our 100' Copper rig, a wire diver out 90' on a #2, and downriggers fished in the top 20'. Best down speed on our Depth Raider was 2.2-2.4 mph, and we worked 80-140FOW the entire day. Best fish of the day was a 16lb King:

It's been a terrific producer for us for years!

It started out a little slow for us but ended up being a great day. We had a 3" Perch attack one of our KA-BOOM Goby baits and swallow the entire back hook right after we got set up. How that entire hook fit in his mouth is beyond me! Then we went for a long boat ride working the inside water East of the chute and didn't hit our first real fish until 8:30am or so. We boated a beautiful brown that took our Northern King Glow Frog off a rigger down 7' in 15 FOW. We worked that inside (10-20FOW) water for a bit more with nothing else to show for our efforts before finally deciding to head out deeper. We switched our program over to a steelhead & king program and once we hit 100FOW the fireworks started. We spent the next few hours doubled and tripled up on Kings and Chrome in 100-120FOW. It was crazy-fun in the back of the boat! Our best set up was a 6 color core fished off of the boards pulling a Northern King NBK. That got bit 4 or 5 times today. We also took multiple fish on an NK Orange Crush off the 20' rigger, a KA-BOOM Flo. red/Black Squiggles off the boards, a DW NBK on a 4 color core off the boards, a DW Steelie Cane off the 40' rigger, and a DW Orange Slurpee fished off of the 30' rigger. We released all of the steelhead that we caught today. The big fish of the trip was a nice King that took an NBK off the 6 color core. Here's a quick video: Best speed for us today was 2.4mph on our Depth Raider. No derby fish for us today, but what a blast! Tomorrow should be even better with the NW wind that was lightly blowing all afternoon.

We actually need is to blow more...just not out the South like it has been all season long. A good sustained NW wind would really help us out a lot.

Tough go out of Fair Haven today. No color, no temp (AGAIN), and a lot fewer fish than we would've liked. We worked hard for what we got today. We hit the inside waters first thing and took a few fish there on the Goby KA-BOOM and a DW Area 51, then ventured out as deep as 220FOW and took a few more fish out there on a DW Steelie Kane spoon. What's up with Mother Nature and her crazy winds this spring? Here's a quick video: Here's a few pics:

Is it really only April 26th? 'Cuz it sure felt like June out there to me today. Lots of clear water and no significant temp breaks again today. Our best stick bait was the KA-BOOM Goby in gray, but the new Dreamweaver VQ Goby spoon was the star of the day for us. We did a brown right off the bat in 12 FOW (the brown was all scarred up with lamprey marks) just East of the chute on the KA-BOOM and then we trolled our way down the shoreline for quite a ways before deciding to head out to deeper water. We put some of our spread down 15-25 feet when we got out to 75 FOW and within minutes we were hooked up. We stayed out there for most of the rest of the morning and continued to pick away at them. Every fish we took out there came on that VQ Goby with the exception of a nice steelie that came on that R&R spoon that worked for us last weekend. Riggers down 15, 20, and 25 all took fish, as did our 2-color core and our flatlines off the boards. Best part of the day was a double on a brown and another King...check out which spoon he took!

We often pick up a fair number of Smallies in the 3-4lb range in the spring while we're targeting browns. They fight like mad and can save the day when the browns aren't cooperating!

We had a LONG day on the water today...fished 5:30am till 7:30pm with a quick lunch break in between trips. We took browns, steelies, cohos, some killer smallmouth bass (that we put back to fight another day) and a Shark today. Yep, we caught our first real King of the season today, and it came as part of a crazy 3lb coho, 7lb brown, and 12 lb. King triple to end our day! What a Chinese Firedrill that was, and what a great fight on light line. Long leads, fluorocarbon, and the #47 KA-BOOM were the ticket for us today. We also took quite a few fish on an R&R Goby looking spoon fished off of both the riggers and the planers. We took quite a few of our fish right off the bottom with Goby presentations. Conditions were very tough with no color and no temp to speak of. We worked really hard for what we got today, but our persistence paid off. Here's some of the larger fish of the day. Most everything else was cookie-cutter size.

We did find bait in the smaller brown that we kept...18 Gobies in his belly!

We're thinking that he was a drop-back brown given his coloration and the fact that his belly was empty. So we think that he was in the creek recently fighting with another fish...it was a nasty mark but definitely not something from a lamprey.